The Authority of Ambiguity: How Vague Law Corrodes the Rule of Law
In 1972, the United States Supreme Court confronted a Jacksonville, Florida, ordinance that had become a tool of casual oppression.1 The law criminalized a collection of seemingly antiquated behaviors: “rogues and vagabonds,” “dissolute persons who go about begging,” “common gamblers,” and “persons wandering or strolling around from place to place without any lawful purpose or object”. Eight defendants, including Margaret Papachristou, were convicted under this statute for activities that, in any modern sense, were entirely innocent. Two were charged with “prowling by auto” after driving down a main street. Others were arrested for standing on a street corner, waiting for a ride to work, or simply walking. Justice William O. Douglas, writing for a unanimous Court in Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville, struck down the ordinance, not because the city lacked the power to regulate conduct, but because the law itself was a masterpiece of ambiguity. It furnished, he wrote, “no standards governing the exercise of the discretion granted by the ordinance,” making it a vehicle for “arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement”. The Jacksonville law was an example of law as poetry—evocative, open to interpretation, and ultimately, a trap for the unwary and the unpopular. It empowered police to make arrests based on their own “personal predilections,” transforming the street corner into a stage for the exercise of standardless authority.
This case, though decades old, exposes a foundational vulnerability in modern legal systems. The collapse of the rule of law is often attributed to grand corruption or systemic inefficiency. A more insidious cause, however, is the quiet tolerance of vagueness as a legitimate form of legal authority. Populist governments and pliant courts thrive on the plasticity of words like “reasonable,” “public order,” “sentiments,” and “decency”. These undefined catch-alls are not benign placeholders; they are weapons of discretion, allowing the state to expand its coercive power without the constraint of clear, objective limits. When a law is so obscure that an ordinary person must guess at its meaning, it fails its most basic function: to provide fair notice of what is prohibited. Worse, it delegates the core legislative function of making law to the police officer on the beat, the prosecutor with a political agenda, and the judge swayed by popular opinion.
This report introduces a new legal framework designed to combat this corrosion: the Doctrine of Verifiability. Its core claim is a radical demand for precision in the exercise of state power. The doctrine posits that no coercive law (no law that empowers the state to deprive a person of life, liberty, or property) may be enacted or enforced unless its essential terms and justifications are verifiable. Verifiability, in this context, means that the law’s commands and the premises upon which it is built can be tested by data or evidence in a courtroom, without resort to cultural guesswork, subjective morality, or the shifting sands of public sentiment. The doctrine seeks to transform law from an art of interpretation into a discipline of engineering. It demands that every coercive rule be as clear, testable, and predictable as a speed limit sign that reads “50 km/h, radar enforced,” and it rejects the arbitrary power inherent in a sign that merely commands drivers to maintain a “decent pace.” This report will build the case for this doctrine, outlining its philosophical foundations, its legal architecture, and its practical application to some of the most contentious areas of modern law.
In the upcoming article I shall explain the different aspects of this doctrine.